Hitherto, screen savers have been pre-defined images or e.g. an image or a piece of music stored in a folder in which the screen saver is instructed to retrieve the image or sound. Predefined animations and so-called flash-files are also known to be used by screensavers.
In EP 0 733 983, a screen saver is described where information is received from a service node and shown on the monitor. This node collects a large amount of information and provides information to a number of users. The type of information and the formatting thereof takes place in accordance with personal settings for each user. However, all information in this screen saver is derived from outside the computer and relates to applications not performed on the computer.